ART REVIEW: "Sarah Diamond"-List Gallery of Swarthmore College

As
a monitor in the List Gallery, I have the privilege of spending 2.5-3 hours
each week surrounded by a varying landscape of paintings, drawings, and
sculpture. This year, I’ve feasted my eyes on colorful seascapes,
mysterious forest scenes, intricately made family quilt paintings, sculptures
both colorful and monotone, and many more. All the while, I’ve gobbled up
every visual treat. This week’s shift was no exception. Thursday’s
reception kicked off the 2013 Senior Thesis Exhibition Series, a set of five
exhibitions held weekly in the gallery. From Thursday to Tuesday each
week, an exhibit will display the talents of one or two senior studio art
students and expose the Swarthmore community to the skills of their own classmates
in a variety of media.

Sarah
Diamond’s oil painting show starts the series off with a bang. Spanning
two years of work, the paintings in this show demonstrate her incredible talent
and sure, confident handling of paint. Sarah has created lovingly vivid
portraits of important people in her life, breathing life into images of people
she cares about.

It’s
quite the journey to walk throughout the gallery and observe the variations
from Sarah’s core style that characterize some of the pieces on display.
“Cariad in the Mangrove Swamp” is immediately notable. The first work in
the show, it bathes its subject in dappled light, reminiscent of looking
through shadows cast by leaves, creating patterns on the surface of the canvas
that delight the eye with their complexity.

(Posted with permission from the artist.)

While
all of the works on display are colorful, expressive, and have a clear likeness
to their subjects, some, such as “Carolyn at Chautauqua”, “Grandma Sleeping”,
and “Grandma with Blue Eyes”, have a playful degree of abstraction in their
execution that provides even more of a visual punch. “Carolyn at
Chautauqua” reminded me of a Matisse portrait in the strange, unexpected
coloration of the subject’s face.

Sarah
approaches her depictions of her family and friends with tenderness and
sensitivity, refusing to sacrifice characterization for surface impression, or
vice versa. As the viewer enters the gallery, they see “Mom”, a large
canvas dedicated to Sarah’s mother’s face, staring back at them from the back
wall of the second room with a caring, maternal air. Smaller works such
as “Sophie” and “Richard”, denoted as studies, capture the liveliness and
spontaneity of both subject and artist.

The artist and “Self-Portrait, Senior Year”. (Posted with permission of the artist.)

The
self-portraits are also highlights of the show perhaps because they reveal
different aspects of Sarah’s personality as an artist. The earlier
portrait, “Self-Portrait in Blue Kimono”, depicts the artist as if thrust into
a bright spotlight. Her face is turned in profile as her body is frontal,
with arms held at about a 30 degree angle from her body. This work
conveys a sense of defiance and strength masking vulnerability. Sarah has
painted herself as looking away from the light and from the viewer. The
colors are bright, shiny and glossy, the textures of flesh and silk defined and
distinguished from one another. Her later self-portrait, however, takes a
different approach. Sarah, clad in a more abstract, dark piece of
clothing, gazes out of the work, interacting more with the viewer as she
pensively, almost bemusedly runs her hand through her hair. Her face is
contorted in deep thought. The portrait is titled “Self-Portrait, Senior
Year”—perhaps she is ruminating on the path she has carved at Swarthmore, and
wondering where her talent will take her next. Where the brushwork of the
earlier painting was tightly controlled, here it is looser, more relaxed.
Where the focus on the earlier painting was on the conglomeration of
surfaces, here it is on Sarah’s own psyche. How appropriate that this
engaging work closes out the artist’s solo show, as the viewer learns about the
artist through her depiction of her family and friends and then through an
intimate self-reflection.

The
exhibit closes Tuesday, April 23. It is not to be missed. A
reception will be held Thursday, April 25, from 4-6 pm, to celebrate the next
exhibit, “Alex Anderson: Elegant Emptiness”.